“They have been a great team, always open to new ideas,” said principal supervisor, Professor John Love.

“They were meeting regularly to discuss ideas and worked incredibly hard on this project.

“The competition was fierce this year, and a few rule changes meant that we had to raise our game.”

He added: “As ever, iGEM is a massive team effort. I am very grateful to those researchers and PhD students who, in addition to their day jobs, helped the students in the lab: Dr Chloe Singleton, Dr Paul James, Dr Jamie Gilman, Dr Mark Hewlett, Dr Liz James and Dan Barber, an iGEM student from the 2016 cohort.”